26. Zhixiang: The term that Huang uses most often for prime minister (caixiang) is a common, but not a formal, title in Chinese official history. At times two or three men were so designated concurrently, in which case “chief councillor” is a more appropriate translation. But to Huang’s mind there should be only one such, and therefore it means here “prime minister.”
27. Gao Huangdi: i.e., the founder of the dynasty, whose canonical name was Taizu and reign name Hongwu (1368–1398). In 1380, following the execution of Prime Minister Hu Weiyong for plotting against the throne, the prime ministership (chengxiang) was abolished, together with its chief agency of administration, the zhongshu sheng, and the Six Ministries were made directly responsible to the emperor. By this Taizu hoped to keep any one man from obtaining sufficient power to rival the throne. However, this arrangement placed a heavy administrative burden upon the emperor, too great a one for him to cope with, and led to the exercise of executive functions by members of his cabinet and eunuchs.
28. Part of Mencius’s description (5B: 2) of the enfeoffment system as he supposed it to have existed during the early Zhou dynasty (ca. 1000 B.C.E.). See ch. 6.
29. That is, the relationship of the emperor to the enfeoffed nobility ruling outside his own immediate domain but within the empire.
30. That is, the emperor’s relationship to the officials of his court administering directly his own domain around the capital. The point of this passage is to show that in ancient times (i.e., ideally) the emperor’s power and dignity were not absolute but relative to a gradually ascending hierarchy of rank, both within his own feudal domain and in China as a whole.
31. Zhou Gong: The fourth son of King Wen of Zhou and younger brother of King Wu. He served as counselor to the latter and on Wu’s death assumed the regency for seven years during the minority of King Cheng. See ch. 2.
32. Liji, Yanyi, Shisanjing zhusu 62: 19a.
33. Han shu, SBCK 84: 3b. According to Yan Shigu’s commentary, this was the Han ritual.
34. Hundred Offices: i.e., all the government officials.
35. Literally “from inside”; i.e., from the eunuchs. See Ming shi 72: 1730.
36. With the decline, during the late Tang, Five Dynasties, and Song periods of the official school system devoted to the preparation of men for government service through the examination system, academies grew up around some of the better private libraries, where serious and independent study could be carried on by men whose primary interest was in true learning rather than official advancement.
37. The proscription of the Zhu Xi school at the end of the twelfth century.
38. During the Ming dynasty three attempts were made to suppress the academies on the charge of heterodox and subversive teaching: in 1537–1538, when Zhan Roshui (1466–1560) was condemned; in 1579, when Zhang Juzheng attempted unsuccessfully to destroy the academies; and in 1625, when the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian again ordered their destruction, followed by a purge of “subversives” associated with the Donglin Academy of Wuxi. Huang has the last in mind here.
39. Huang himself cites such a case in his account of Zhuang Chang, 1437–1499 (jinshi 1466), which repeats the charge in the same language. In 1457, as a Hanlin bachelor, Zhuang, together with two colleagues, submitted memorials rebuking the emperor for his preoccupation with sexual pleasures. For this he (and they) were flogged at court in the presence of the emperor, and Zhuang was banished to Guiyang. Later rehabilitated, for some years he refused to serve and was accused by the scholar and statesman Qiu Jun (1420–1495) of “leading scholars throughout the land into defiance of the court.” Qiu claimed that the Ming founder, Taizu, had made refusal to serve a punishable offense (Mingru xuean 45: 14).
40. Certified scholars receiving official stipends.
41. Libationer (taixue jijiu): i.e., chancellor or rector of the Imperial College. In ancient times at great feasts the honor of offering the first libation of wine was reserved for the oldest man present. Libationer thus became a term of the highest respect and in the Han was applied to the most learned of the court scholars. Between 275 and 280, under the Western Jin (265–316), the head of the Imperial College was designated Libationer, a title that remained in use until the end of the Qing dynasty.
42. Here Huang follows the recommendation of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi. See Er Chengji, Mingdao wenji 1: 449–450; Yichuan wenji 3: 563; and Zhu Xi; Daxue zhangju, preface, pp. 1b-3a.
43. A system used in the Latter Han dynasty for the selection of court officials upon the recommendation of local prefects (junshou) and the prime ministers of the various states (guoxiang).
44. Those who have passed the provincial examinations and obtained the juren degree.
45. See vol. 1, chs. 6, 11, 19.
46. Letter in Reply to Zide, Tinglin shiwen ji 4: 7b.
47. Classic of Documents, Counsels of Great Yu II.
48. Analects 6: 25.
49. Analects 13: 20.
50. Mencius 7A: 4.
51. Chen Lihe, quoted in Hummel, Eminent Chinese, 2: 773.
52. Willard J. Peterson, “Fang I-Chih’s Western Learning,” p. 401.
53. John B. Henderson, Chinese Cosmology, p. 141.
54. Zhouren juan 43: 6b.
55. Zhouren juan 46: 19a.
56. Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 32–33.
57. Adapted from A Description of the Empire of China (London, 1741), 2: 124, cited in Bernard, Matteo Ricci’s Scientific Contribution to China, p. 20.
58. Henderson, Chinese Cosmology, p. 146.
59. Willard Peterson, Fang I-chih’s Western Learning, p. 400.
60. See vol. 1, ch. 22.
61. Zhang Boxing, personal preface to the Chengshi . . . richeng, Zhengyi tang quanshu 1: 1.
62. See ch. 21.
Chapter 26
POPULAR VALUES AND BELIEFS
The vast majority of Chinese in premodern times lived in villages and small towns of a few thousand people at most. Some, such as peddlers and entertainers, traveled a great deal, but most ventured no further than the nearest market town. Their cultural horizons were also narrow, since most could not read or write. All they learned of the outside world and of the great traditions of philosophy, religion, history, and poetry had to come to them in speech or song. The few in a village who were literate generally could read only texts written in a fairly simple style; they would have had difficulty understanding the complex and allusive writings of the learned. Yet there is no question that villagers and literati shared a common culture. This does not mean that every Chinese, no matter what his or her education or social position, had the same values and attitudes and beliefs about the human and divine worlds. Yet the many class-, dialect-, and occupation-based subcultures, with all their differences, were all recognizably Chinese. What made this shared culture possible? A partial answer to this question can be discovered by thinking about the ways in which religious ideas and moral values, such as the Buddhist idea of reincarnation, or Confucian attitudes toward ritual, were communicated to ordinary people.
What we might call vernacular ideology—the largely unexamined stock of beliefs, attitudes, and values that most people in a culture share—was to a certain extent absorbed unconsciously by Chinese villagers through everyday language, customary behavior, the symbols that were used to decorate every thing from houses to clothes, and the like. It was “in the air,” as we say, embedded in the fabric of life. Interesting and important though this aspect of people’s beliefs is, however, it is almost impossible to study historically.
Moral and religious values were also communicated intentionally, of course. Often this took the form of spontaneous responses to everyday events: the scolding of a naughty child, the quotation of a proverb to comfort a friend in distress. Extemporaneous moral guidance of this sort took place constantly in traditional China as it does everywhere, in interchanges between parents and children, teachers and students, friends and relations, and people working together. T
hese naturally are also virtually impossible for the historian to study.
However, values and beliefs were also communicated in more structured ways, of which many written traces have been left behind that can be studied. These traces are of two types: first, books and pamphlets that were written for people to read to themselves or aloud, even if their formal education was fairly limited; second, opera scripts, liturgies, and other texts that served as the basis of scripted performances of one kind or another or that were directly derived from performances, like transcripts. Though we will look at both material meant for reading and material intended to be performed, the second is far more important for our purposes than the first. Our performance-related texts are divided into two broad categories, those related to ensemble performance such as ritual and opera and those related to solo/duo performance, which can be in verse, prose, or a combination of the two. These five types of performance-related text are treated in the first two sections of this chapter.
The solo/duo performance genres were generally more didactic than the ensemble genres; that is, they were often written specifically to inculcate religious beliefs or ethical standards. In this they resemble, sometimes very closely, the didactic writings aimed at a popular reading audience that are presented in the third section of this chapter.
PART ONE: ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE
Rituals and operas were from time to time overtly didactic, but instruction was not usually their primary purpose. Nevertheless, since the fundamental function of ritual was to order the relations of humans with the gods and with each other, the teaching of values and inculcation of beliefs was a natural and inevitable accompaniment of any ritual. By the same token, although the primary function of opera was to entertain gods and men, from the very beginning of the tradition in Jin and Yuan times almost all Chinese drama was moralistic, and therefore it taught about standards of behavior. Thus both ritual and opera, each in its own way, communicated values and beliefs. Moreover, these forms communicated with special power because they used music, dance, gesture, and costume, as well as words, and thereby involved the emotions of their audiences to a much higher degree than reading or recitation did.
By late imperial times the world of performance in China had become fantastically elaborated, with hundreds of local opera genres, probably at least as many kinds of solo performance, and an almost infinite variety of local rituals. Ritual had of course been the bedrock of Confucian thought since the time of Confucius himself and had been the core of Chinese elite culture long before that, but after the Tang dynasty theatricals of all kinds became increasingly important. By the early nineteenth century a European traveler, Father Evariste Hue, who had spent years in China, noted that the country resembled “an immense fair, where . . . you see in all quarters stages and mountebanks, jokers and comedians, laboring uninterruptedly to amuse the public. Over the whole surface of the country . . . rich and poor, mandarins and people, all the Chinese, without exception, are passionately addicted to dramatic representations. There are theaters everywhere.”1 Nevertheless, rituals of all kinds retained their central role in Chinese symbolic life, and Father Huc could with equal accuracy have characterized the country by its profusion of temples, religious processions, and family ceremonials. In short, performance—scripted performance—was central to the communication of values in traditional China, and ritual and opera were the most important forms of scripted performance.
RITUAL
We have already seen that ritual played a central role in the life of the educated elite from the earliest times. By the late imperial era, after centuries—indeed, millennia—of indoctrination both overt and covert by the clerical elite of literati, priests, and monks, the lives of ordinary people had also come to be suffused with ritual. They experienced ritual in two settings: the community and the household. Community rituals were usually focused on a temple that had been built by the people and was maintained by them, quite independent of ecclesiastical or governmental prompting. The most important household rituals were, by contrast, focused on the family altar, at which offerings to the ancestors and to various deities were made.2
Community Ritual
Rituals were celebrated collectively by villagers and townspeople at a fixed time every year (or at set intervals that could be as long as forty years) and also at times of crisis or thanksgiving. Annual festivals were generally understood to celebrate the birthday of a god who received cult in a village temple. Special rituals were held when the villagers believed themselves to be in danger or when they wished to celebrate a major accomplishment, such as the renovation of a temple.
PROCESSIONS
Village rituals almost always began with a large procession in which the god who was being honored was carried on a palanquin, accompanied by many performers and what we would call floats. Processions served to announce the beginning of a temple festival and to identify the neighborhoods or villages that were participating in it. They were important to the people at large because—unlike many parts of the ritual proper—they were entirely public and they were exciting and entertaining to watch. Villagers from miles around would come to see them, sometimes staying with friends or relatives overnight. The very size and richness of the processions showed the degree of devotion the gods deserved, and the atmosphere of celebration and excitement taught the appropriate style in which that devotion should be expressed.
A PROCESSION ON THE BIRTHDAY OF THE SANZONG GOD
This is a description of an unusually elaborate procession that was performed as recently as the late 1930s. It was centered on the Sanzong Temple in the Big West Gate quarter of the county capital of Zhangzi, in southeastern Shanxi province. The account was written by a native of Zhangzi County who spent many years collecting information from local residents about their temple festivals.
On the morning of the fifth day of the sixth month the traveling image of the Sanzong God [the ancient drought god known as Hou Yi, the mythical archer who shot nine suns from the sky when ten came out all at once] went out in his palanquin, carried by eight men and accompanied by music, to the Temple of the Flame Emperor [also known as Shennong, the god of farming] to quietly await the spirit tablets or palanquins of the gods of the surrounding villages who were responding to his invitation. In the afternoon around 3: 00 P.M. they all returned to the Sanzong Temple. This procession was much longer and more impressive than the morning one, with many different kinds of display. It wound through the streets and alleys like a blue-green dragon writhing its tail, accompanied by loud music. The crowds of people undulated like waves, as happy as at New Year’s. They came, dressed in new clothes, from twenty li around.
The procession began with an honor guard of old musicians. The first pair carried red banners with the words “Stand Aside!” and “Silence!” while the banners of the second pair read “Pure Way” and “Flying Tigers.” The rest carried banners and weapons with fanciful names such as Golden Melons and Big Marsh Fans. These ritual implements all came from the Laozi Temple in Nanzhuang Village, about a mile and a half away. This honor guard was an old custom, and it led the procession no matter which neighborhood was the sponsor of the temple festival that year.
After the honor guard came martial arts troupes led by strong men brandishing rope whips. They walked ahead to clear the way and were followed by men in single file, sometimes walking, sometimes dancing, who dueled with short spears, demonstrated “boxing,” and wielded swords. . . . They were followed by the palanquins of the Five Honored Gods, known locally as the Little Framework Lords, led by dharma cymbals and altar drums. The gods, dressed in caps and robes, had clay heads, with faces painted red, white, blue, black, and yellow, and wooden framework bodies [over which they wore their robes].
Then came a troupe of flute players whose music sounded like the wind, leading the “springy four-man palanquin.” This was made of padded satin quilts, folded, and padded satin mattresses. . . . In the middle of the palanquin rode two porcelain dolls, secured with
cords made of colored silk floss. Antique vases, jade mirrors, and other old objects made of carved wood or carved stone were attached to each side. Through the middle of the palanquin ran springy wooden poles wrapped with colored silk. The young men carrying it . . . rhythmically bounced the palanquin up and down so that the tassels flew about.
Next came the “stiff four-man palanquin,” which also was preceded by a troupe of musicians playing softly. The stiff palanquin was made of wood and was shaped like a pagoda. It was square above and below, and had brightly painted designs on each side, and was also adorned with silk, flowers, and mirrors large and small. At the top was attached an object like a feather duster, made of chicken feathers and over a yard long, to symbolize the palanquin’s cloud-brushing height. Strips of colored cloth hung down all around, tangling and fluttering. . . . Each of the palanquins . . . was preceded and followed by musicians. Each was followed by several “spirit horses,” fully saddled and bridled, with flowers on their heads, which were provided for the invited gods to ride.
There were any number of “lifted characters.” In these, an iron frame with a long iron rod extending above it was tied securely to a strong young man and hidden under his clothes. Then an actor or actress in costume was tied to the rod in such a way that he or she could freely sing, gesture, and speak in midair, six feet or more above the ground. (They first put on their makeup, then were secured to the rods, and finally put on their costumes.)
There also were “shouldered characters.” These were square platforms like tables that were about a yard on a side and were carried by two men. A specially shaped iron rod was fixed securely in the platform, and an actress was tied to its upper end while an actor stood on the table beneath her, the costumes of both concealing the rod. Each platform presented a scene from an opera. . . . The performers were all youths of about fifteen years of age.
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2 Page 13